Obama Channels FDR, Invokes Memories of US Shame During Holocaust

Peggy Shapiro has dedicated her life to exposing and combating antisemitism. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Shapiro was born in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp located in Landsberg, Germany, the same town in which Adolph Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.

Today, the married grandmother of four serves as Midwest Director for the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. As a retired college professor, she is keenly aware of the antisemitism epidemic on college campuses and its eerie similarity to conditions at universities in 1930s Europe.

Shapiro is also all too familiar with the Roosevelt administration’s failings during the Holocaust – a blight that the US has sought to rectify, but one that she sees repeating itself in the current occupant of the White House.

Last week, Shapiro took to the pages of the blog American Thinker to remind America: “Two Pleas, Two Dates, Two Refusals.”

“The date was October 6, 1943, and more than four hundred rabbis came to plead for US government to save Jews from Hitler. They hoped to alert the American public about the Nazi massacres,” Shapiro wrote. “Yet the rabbis marched through Washington D.C. to the gates of the White House, where they had expected a small delegation would be granted a meeting with President Roosevelt. The president was unavailable even though his schedule that day was open. His calendar listed nothing between a 1:00 lunch with the Secretary of State and a 4:00 ceremony.”

While American Jewry has this notion that Roosevelt was a friend to the Jewish people, the truth is that he had been silent about the extermination of Jews in Europe. FDR wouldn’t even implement diplomatic or economic sanctions against the German regime. Even after evidence was presented to Under Secretary of State Wells in late 1942, the Roosevelt administration remained resolute in its head-in-the-sand policy.

Shapiro asks, “Why did the president sneak out the back door of the White House rather than hear the rabbis’ urgent request?” The answer, she points out, is that “the rabbis’ pleas conflicted with his policy towards European Jewry.”

Between the day Roosevelt refused to meet with the rabbis, until the end of World War II, 182 members of Shapiro’s family were murdered by the Nazis.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington D.C. to address the Congress of the United States, once again we have a US president refusing to meet a Jewish leader who comes to warn of impending doom.

The similarities are undeniable and frightening.

Just like the rabbis who were shunned by FDR because they did not march in step with the policies of his administration, Netanyahu is also the leader of people under the threat of genocide, who has substantial disagreements with the president of the United States.

Just as the rabbis faced public criticism as well as condemnation from Jewish Americans who didn’t want to ruffle feathers over seventy years ago, Netanyahu has been ostracized by the mainstream press and many liberal Jews in the United States who refuse to believe that history can repeat itself and whose loyalties lie with the Party of Roosevelt, not the safety of the Jewish people and ultimately the United States.

The rhetoric stemming from the administration and some Democrats that Netanyahu accepted Speaker Boehner’s (R-Ohio) invitation to address Congress before the White House was notified has turned out to be utter nonsense. Even the reliably anti-Israel New York Times was forced to admit, through a correction, that Netanyahu “accepted after the administration had been informed.”

The public feud between Netanyahu and Obama is a smokescreen – a failed attempt to drum up disgust against the prime minister by an administration who fears Netanyahu telling the American people the truth about the dangers a nuclear Iran poses to Israel, the region and the world.

FDR knew the truth a year before the rabbis came calling. But sounding the alarm bells – bombing railroad tracks – warning the world and putting Hitler on notice, wasn’t part of the foreign policy game plan.

Holocaust survivors, their children and every Jew in the world whose family members perished at the hands of the Nazis can only wonder what might have been if FDR had taken the time to chat with those rabbis.

Today they are witnessing history repeat itself. On the steps of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Peggy Shapiro is Midwest Director, StandWithUs  

Obama’s chilling Iran nuke lie

by Michael Goodwin

Reports that President Obama agrees Iran should be free to make a nuclear bomb in about 10 years put the lie to his repeated vow never to allow an Iranian nuke. The broken promise is the international twin to his domestic whopper that you “can keep your doctor.”

You can’t, but Iran can keep its enriched uranium, making this lie an even bigger bombshell. As in, bombs away.

It is impossible to overstate the potential catastrophe of the emerging deal. If the terms reported by the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and others become final, it would mean the United States and leading UN powers give their blessing for the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to have the ultimate weapon, effectively rewarding Iran for decades of criminal behavior and acts of war against America, Israel and others.

The deal also would launch a new round of nuclear proliferation among Arab states, with Saudi Arabia long promising to get a bomb if Iran does. Others fearful of Iran’s dominance are sure to follow, escalating the tit-for-tat patterns in the region into a nuclear nightmare.

In addition, an unbound Iranian nuclear industry and spreading enrichment technology make it likely that one or more of the Islamic terror groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Boko Haram and Islamic State, is likely to get the bomb. And there is no doubt they would use it.

In short, the unfolding nuclear landscape presents the whole of mankind with unprecedented peril.

The terms of the developing agreement, as explained to reporters by negotiators, vindicates concerns that Obama would surrender to Iranian demands while claiming otherwise. He caved in with a deal that envisions a decade-long phase-out of restrictions, allowing Obama to say that there will be no bomb on his watch.

In reality, that is meaningless. The American stamp of approval for a nuclear Iran instantly reshapes geopolitical strategies.

Israel faces a new era of extreme risk, simultaneously in the cross hairs of a genocidal enemy and betrayed by its longest and closest ally. The betrayal continued even yesterday, with Secretary of State John Kerry blasting critics, presumably including Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Anyone running around right now, jumping to say we don’t like the deal, or this or that, doesn’t know what the deal is,” Kerry said in Senate testimony. “There is no deal yet.”

That’s only technically accurate because Obama and Kerry are keeping the details secret. The scam recalls how the White House hid the details of ObamaCare until the bill was passed; it’s what the FCC is doing with Internet regulations.

The timing is especially suspect, with the nuclear deal moving toward finality on the eve of Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next week. Iran recently said the US was “desperate” for an agreement, and the reasons are obvious. Getting Iran’s signature on a document, any document, before the visit would allow Obama to take the steam out of Netanyahu’s warning by spinning the settlement as the best possible and making it seem unstoppable.

It will be — unless Congress finds a spine. The White House says Obama does not plan to send the agreement to the Senate for ratification, arguing it falls outside the definition of a treaty.

That shouldn’t fly, given the stakes to us, Israel and our Arab allies. But that all depends on whether Democrats continue to put loyalty to Obama ahead of their duty to America’s national security.

Even a handful of Dems joining with majority Republicans would be enough to reject any terms that allow Iran to get a nuke. In doing so, those senators would be enforcing the refrain that no deal is better than a bad deal.

And make no mistake — Obama has produced a very bad deal. Bad for America, and bad for the world.